Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

“Are you kidding? I have called you repeatedly and-”

“Yes, yes, I understand. I have been remiss at responding to your inquiries because I’ve been, well, I’ve had other priorities. I apologize. I realize now that I have let the stories in your paper make it even more difficult for me to complete this project. But I will complete it.”

“When?”

“You’ll see. Soon. Very soon.”

I wrote that down in my notebook.

“Wait,” Haskell said. “We are not on the record.”

“Did I ever say we were off? When exactly is ‘very soon’? By next season?”

Haskell folded his hands on his chest and fixed his gaze on the table.

“Do you want to hear what I have to tell you?” He lifted his gaze to me. “Or should we just give it to Channel Eight?”

I thought of Elvis embarrassing me that morning at Audrey’s Diner. I was not about to get one-upped by Channel Eight twice in one day.

“What do you got?”

“Off the record?”

I set my pen on the table. “For now.”

“Two items,” Haskell said. “Something we’re going to announce shortly. And something else I can’t really tell you about yet. Just a heads-up.”

Christ, I thought. That’s how it went when you agreed to go off the record.

“What’s the second thing?”

“You have a paper tomorrow, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“And then your next paper is Saturday?”

“Yep.”

He gave this a moment’s thought. “If I tell you, then you cannot use it in the paper in any way, shape, or form, is that correct?”

“If you-”

“Never mind. Look, let me be candid, all I can say at the moment is that we might be seeking a bit of help from the town.”

“Financial help?”

He considered for a moment, his way of letting me know, yes, it was financial help. Then he said, “I’m afraid that’s all I can say.”

“Come on.”

“I’m sorry. Things are in a delicate stage. I’m being as helpful as I can.”

On the contrary, he was giving me just enough information that it could, in theory, handcuff me if I happened to hear something more specific from someone else. That’s why he’d asked about my not being able to use it in any way, shape, or form. Although I hadn’t answered that question, Haskell might remember things differently, if it served his purpose. But what could I do? If I hadn’t gone off the record, I’d have nothing. I knew Haskell was as slippery as a bass on a bad hook, but I had no choice, or I thought I had no choice, but to deal with him any way that I could. At least he was speaking to me.

“That’s pretty disappointing, Laird,” I said. “So I better be able to put whatever your announcement is in tomorrow’s paper.”

Haskell brightened. “You will.” He picked up the phone, punched two numbers, and said into the phone, “Felicia. Yes. Could you send him up? No need for you to-no. No. Yes, I understand. Thank you, dear.” He returned the phone to its cradle, stood up, and walked over to the door, pushing the button on the doorknob that locked it. “I guarantee you will love this.”

He waited at the door, smiling. I heard footsteps in the corridor outside the door, then the sound of someone trying to open the door.

“Whoa, one minute,” Haskell said. He undid the lock and held the doorknob. “It is my distinct pleasure,” he said, “to introduce to you the new coach of the Hungry River Rats.”

He swung the door open and there, filling up most of the doorway in a blue-and-gold River Rats sweat suit, was Jason Esper.

“How are we doing today, Coach Esper?” Haskell said as he pumped the hand of Darlene’s husband. Jason was looking at me, just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I decided I’d better stand up.

“Meat,” I said, using his nickname. I extended my hand. “Congrats.”

He tilted his head slightly and allowed himself a small, amused smile. Haskell nudged him in my direction. Jason took my hand. I felt the calluses on his knuckles, the scars of a hundred minor-league hockey fights. He held tight when I tried to release. “You can call me Coach,” he said. He let my hand go.

“Midget squad?” I said.

“Yep.” He turned to Haskell and handed him a manila envelope.

“Thank you,” Haskell said. “Let’s sit down for a minute, shall we?”

I’d always thought of Jason as big, but he looked bigger than ever as he eased himself into a chair. He had indeed cleaned himself up since the last time I’d seen him. That afternoon eight or nine months before, he was hunched on a stool at the Kal-Ho Tavern in Kalkaska, a can of Busch Light and a empty shot glass in front of him, his lighter lying atop a pack of Marlboros. I’d stopped for a patty melt on my way back from a meeting at corporate in Traverse City. If Jason noticed me, he gave no indication. He sipped and smoked with his half-open eyes on a soap opera on the television hanging over the back bar. A jagged line of clotted blood crossed the bridge of his nose.

Now, sitting across the table next to Haskell, Jason looked as lean and strong as I’d seen him since he was the mullet-headed winger, number 28, skating for the Pipefitters all those years ago. Scars from sticks, pucks, and his nightly scraps cut thin slashes beneath his eyes and along his chin. But his blue eyes were bright, his blond curls clung tightly to his head, he wore a neatly trimmed blond goatee touched with gray. A different man, at least in appearance.

I looked at Haskell and said, “What about Poppy?” Dick Popovich had been the midget coach for five years. He’d never gotten the Rats out of the regionals. With Haskell’s boy, Taylor, in goal, people figured he had a chance.

“He’s retiring,” Haskell said.

“Of course. And we’re so desperate for a winner that we hire a guy from our archnemesis to get us there.”

“I hired him,” Haskell said.

“I might have Poppy give me a hand with the goalies,” Jason said.

“Goalies need all the help they can get,” I said.

Jason gave me a mirthless wink. “You ought to know, eh, Carpie?”

Jason had been sitting on the opposing team’s bench when I allowed the goal that cost the River Rats the state title eighteen years before. He’d moved to nearby Mancelona with his parents as a teenager. He was quick and agile for a tall kid. And mean as a snake. Our coach begged him to defect from the Pipefitters to the Rats, but his parents had other plans-college hockey and then the NHL. He lived with a teammate’s family near Detroit during the Pipefitters’ season and spent summers up north. Our paths didn’t cross much.

While I was taking journalism classes at the University of Michigan, Jason skipped college for Canadian juniors. He played one game in the NHL and later wound up skating for two hundred dollars a game in minor-league towns like Raleigh and Baltimore, where people went to hockey games to drink beer and howl for players to spill one another’s blood. I had heard he was briefly a celebrity in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Local youngsters wrapped their knuckles with white tape to emulate their brawling hero.

He was briefly a celebrity in Starvation, too, after he retired from the minors and moved to town to sell insurance in the early 1990s. By then I had been working in Detroit for years and planned to stay until, as I dreamed, the New York Times or Washington Post hired me away. I never quite understood how Jason managed to woo Darlene. In a matter of weeks, my mother had told me, their romance went from a few weekends in Jason’s cabin in the woods to a wedding in the Pine County Courthouse. After hearing that, I wasn’t able to bring myself to go back to Starvation for months.

Darlene didn’t like to talk about her years with Jason. Everyone in town knew that he was much better at video golf in bars than he was at selling insurance, which was why he and Darlene could manage only to rent the little apartment over Sally’s that she lived in now. I teased her once that she had married Jason because he had skated for the team that had made me the town goat, that she had wanted to make me jealous. She went silent for two long nights, which made me think that what I had said in jest might actually have been a fact.